State Of Origin

It's generally considered poor form to focus overly much on a band's name. In Footy's case, it may also be understandable. Not just because it's a bit of a weird one – but because it seemingly couldn't suit their aesthetic any less. Consisting of two pianists performing abstract, semi-improvised experimental music, Footy's hypnotic, minimal work belies their yobbish sobriquet almost utterly.

“You may be surprised – but we're both actually massive fans of Australian rules football,” Paddy Gordon laughs. “Which is perhaps not immediately obvious from the music. It's just what we'd talk about when we hung out – music and football. And, one day, Lewis [Mulvey] just said it. 'How about something footy-related?' and I was like 'No, dude – that's dumb' – but here we are. It's kind of a joke – but not really.”

It's oddly representative of Footy's approach. Their music suggests a certain intellectual or arty elitism. Heavily influenced by the likes of Steve Reich and pioneering German acts like Neu!, Footy's largely instrumental work seems to spring from the world of academia and clinical experimentation. Except, Paddy Gordon and Lewis Mulvey are simply two musicians who enjoyed getting drunk and jamming.

“It's actually a pretty classic how-you-start-a-band in this day and age. We were both working at a call centre,” Gordon explains. “It was actually a pretty horrible turn of events. One day, we got to work and one of the bosses had been killed in an accident on the way to work and everyone was told to go home. I was standing out the front of work, stunned and smoking a cigarette, and Lewis just came up and started chatting to me.

“Apparently we'd met at a music festival the year before – but I still have no memory of that,” he laughs. “Anyway, we went and grabbed a beer. Ended up drinking all day, talking about music. As it happened, there was a Hammond organ at the house I was living at and we just ended up jamming. The early stuff was much more about drinking – but eventually we realised that we might be onto something special and got a bit more serious.”

The band's recently-released debut album Mobile Cemetery is the product of years of refinement. Their work is defined by space and restraint. Having formed in 2009, Footy have spent four years exploring different approaches to their unique line-up. They've performed with saxophonists, drummers and vocalists. In the end, they've stripped it back to their fundamental twin-piano approach.

“Refinement's actually a word we use a little bit when talking about the process that we want to follow. We're both about stripping things back as much as we can and saying as much as possible with the most minimal means,” Gordon explains. “A lot of the early demos and recordings we did were a lot more florid or ornate. You know, a lot less silence and space than there is now.

“It's definitely been a conscious decision – to try and achieve the maximum amount of expression or whatever with the most minimal of means,” he says. “We never made a conscious decision to play improvised music or have any particularly experimental kind of aesthetic. As vague as it must sound, it's just the way it sorted of ended up happening from jamming and that sort of thing. It's what ended up coming out.”